Gaming Life Germany: GC Day One

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Camping, babes, concerts and everything E3 wasn't.

By David Clayman

Today, the IGN crew descended on Games Convention in Leipzig expecting a little more from the show than we saw last year. While E3 in America has morphed into an exclusive, invite only, sprawling mess, GC just keeps growing and has become even more of a public attraction. While you may have heard about the show picking up more of the slack since E3's metamorphosis, this year it also includes concerts, camping, family events, and as always the show floor is open to the public.

We rolled into the Convention Center early on the first day to take full advantage of the only day that is dedicated to the press. I may have a warped sense of perception due to the gross amount of meat and sauerkraut I've consumed this week, but the show feels far more crowded than last year. Even after reading that there would be a larger attendance the number of game enthusiasts walking the halls surpassed my expectations. But did the quality and number of games increase as well? Read on to find out.

The Convention Halls

The best way to lay out what GC had to offer us is to break it into the five halls that make up the sprawling network of buildings. Hall 1 is the business center where most "behind closed doors" meetings take place and just down the way is a small room where press conferences are held. These briefings are not the massive spectacles that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo put on in Los Angeles every year but they still contain nuggets of hot information. For example, this morning Ubisoft announced Cranium for the Wii - a brilliant idea in my opinion.

Other wonders that are absent from the show floor but available to see by appointment in the Business center are Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Killzone 2. As usual, the big guns rarely make it into the public's hands at these types of shows. The business center hides many wonders, but as you might imagine the décor is dull. For eye-opening spectacles that often have little to do with videogames you must enter the other halls.

Hall 2 houses both Microsoft and Nintendo which take up nearly half the real-estate in that area. Microsoft kept the same park and beach theme we've seen in past years with tons of kiosks, but not much that we haven't seen before. After rushing to the chance to play PGR4, there wasn't a whole lot of other stuff that caught my eye. The Games for Windows section ended up being more exciting than the huge area for 360. I'd much rather play Crysis, Age of Conan, and Hellgate than Viva Pinata: Party Animals.

Sony's Bathroom Theme

Nintendo's booth consisted of large open areas with very little to look at. They highlighted Wii Fit and Wii Sports in a big way. Other than that the main attraction was a German Brain Training DS game. There's nothing more disappointing than being assigned to do Nintendo coverage and having nothing to report on. Rumor has it that Metroid Prime 3 and Mario Galaxy are being shown by appointment but unfortunately we weren't on that short list today. Boohoo.

Other attractions found in Hall 2 include human bowling (we'll have video of that soon) and booth babes wearing painted-on shirts. Nothing advertises a product like nudity.

Onward to hall 3 where Sony and EA dominate the landscape. Both of these gaming behemoths have booths large enough to hold a proper press conference, complete with a stage and large screens. They also include a plethora of kiosks for the fans. Sony has WarHawk, Heavenly Sword, Wipeout HD, and Lair, available on the floor. Head of Video Fran Mirabella and I also found time to play a level from Uncharted. The fluidity of the animations is very impressive, but I'm still iffy on how well the cover system works with the combat. EA's most talked about game for the second year in a row is Spore. This game couldn't possibly gain more momentum than it has right now.

A Massive Bike Ramp

Ubisoft is also in this section where they loudly advertised the world premiere of Far Cry 2. Advance word from Editor Erik Brudvig is that the game looks "cool." Stay tuned for more detailed impressions.

Hall 4 is the home to third-party developers and all sorts of gear. Activision fills a large chunk of space with a booth that allows a huge number of people to Rock out on Guitar Hero 3. Square Enix has a smaller booth located behind a giant BMX ramp where the majority of their kiosks contain games that are new to Europe, but have been out in the states for a good long while. Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of FFXI was also on hand in the morning to answer questions about his game. There's a hall 5 but it's so insignificant that it doesn't even deserve its own paragraph. There you'll find children's titles and "family" oriented software that practically repels crowds at a convention. The only saving grace of this hall is the occasional cute DS game.

At the end of the day I nursed my sore feet before attending a very exciting Call of Duty 4 event in the evening. Besides playing two single-player levels on 360 and PS3 they also had multiplayer on the PC up and running. I'll have a full "Behind Closed Doors" feature on that experience coming up shortly along with a video tour of the show.